BY OCCASION
What are you organising?
Most teams do not go shopping for a team-building tool. They have a date, a reason and a headcount, and they need the thing that fits. Start from the reason.
Halloween team events that are not a costume contest
The one date in the corporate year where a team will forgive you for being strange. Spend it on a story with actual stakes rather than a call where three people wear hats.
- Runs:
- October 15 to November 1
- Teams start booking:
- late September
Thanksgiving team events for the week nobody can get everyone online
Half the team is travelling, the other half is covering. The event that works that week is short, warm and does not punish the people who miss it.
- Runs:
- November 18 to 26
- Teams start booking:
- late October
The December party, for a company that is not in one room
The end-of-year event is the one everybody remembers and the one that ages worst. A quiz in a Zoom grid is not a party, and a happy hour excludes whoever has a family at six.
- Runs:
- December 1 to 22
- Teams start booking:
- early November
The January kickoff, minus the ninety-minute slide deck
The first all-hands of the year sets the tone for the next eleven months, and most of them are last quarter's review with a new cover slide. The goal is not information, it is that people leave the hour feeling like one company.
- Runs:
- January 6 to February 14
- Teams start booking:
- early December
Company anniversary events that bridge year one and year ten
A milestone is the one event with a story already written: yours. The trap is that the story only belongs to the people who were there, and most of the company was not.
- Year-round:
- the date you were founded
- Teams start booking:
- two to three months ahead
Onboarding events where a new cohort actually meets the company
New hires meet their manager, their laptop and a compliance video. They rarely meet each other, and almost never meet anyone outside their own team, which is exactly what makes month three lonely.
- Year-round:
- whenever a cohort starts
- Teams start booking:
- two weeks before day one
